SOURCE: "The New Machiavelli: Shakespeare in the Henriad," in Literature East and West: Essays Presented to R. K. DasGupta, edited by G. R. Taneja and Vinod Sena, Allied Publishers Limited, 1995, pp. 122-49.

In the following essay, Chaudhuri contends that in the character of Henry V Shakespeare reveals "an integrated and purposive development of a new Renaissance ideal of kingship" in which he "appropriates and extends the Machiavellian view of man."

Shakespeare's Prince Hal, and his later incarnation as Henry V, have always drawn equivocal responses. The New Arden Henry V lists "The Diversity of Critical Opinions"1; but what might worry us is not this diver sity but the ambiguity of the single response. From Hazlitt through Bradley to Danby, Nuttall, Greenblatt and Kristian Smidt,2 readers have been struck by Hal/Henry's image as an ideal prince, guided by his unquestioned duty from the rejection of...